Jo Ann - 87 Years Young

When I was 30 years old, I was a couch potato who decided in a moment of insanity to take up mountain climbing. Now I would like to say that this decision transformed me into a paragon of strength and aerobic fitness. It didn’t. I remained throughout my years of climbing and backpacking the slowest, weakest climber and hiker in any group. I had only two things in my favour: the ability to keep going for as long as it took, and a tolerance for high altitude. I was the slowest member of the party at 10,000 feet but often the fastest when we went higher. Because of this, I climbed many high, beautiful mountains all over the world, including the two highest mountains in North America—Denali in Alaska and Logan in Canada. When I was 73, I think I set the record for the slowest ascent of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.

For the past fifteen years, I have migrated to adventure activities that are less physically demanding, especially river rafting, dogsledding, horseback riding and snowshoeing. And realizing that I didn’t have a lot of fitness to lose as I aged, I turned to Randy. Has he turned me into a paragon of strength and aerobic fitness? Of course not. But he has stopped the rot and turned it around. He makes workouts fun, even now that we cannot do them together because of COVID. And he inspires me to always do my best, meaning that despite my creaky joints, I make progress every week.